I love twitter. It is now a vital part of my everyday life. Even when I am out, I check what’s going on in Twitter through my iPhone. But this post is not about my addiction to the 140-characters social network, it is about its latest feature: realtime updates. I find it completely useless and pointless.
Yes, we are living in the era of information and yes, we want to get as much information and as soon as possible, but there is practically no difference if we get this “super crucial” info a minute later with a bunch of other tweets. I am following less than 600 people and yet, having Growl pop up notifications every 5-10 seconds is very counter-productive. I don’t want to know what happens when someone is following thousands of people. Probably his/her screen is always packed with the latest tweets.
When I am on my MacBook, chances are that I am trying to do something important. It may be a project for a university class, a blog post, analyzing some data or simply reading an article. With pop ups coming up all the time, concentrating is almost impossible. I suppose that I am not an exception and that people work on their computers. And if your job description is not “twitter analyst”, then realtime updates are completely useless.
Probably the only case that realtime updates are usefull, is the one of a sporting event. Yes, In NBA Finals realtime updates are priceless, but do we always need realtime updates? In my opinion, no.
Easy – when busy, shut down Twitter completely. I usually follow the Pomodoro technique when working, 25 minutes of uninterrupted work (no Twitter, no e-mail) followed by a 5 minute break.
Works wonders for my mild ADHD.
Personally, I love real-time updates, especially what they did with the follows and favourites